The Persian Gulf Arabs States do not want these so-called refugees as they know ISIS has infiltrated their ranks.

While the United States and Europe argue over how many Syrian refugees to allow in, the richest Persian Gulf states have accepted exactly zero.

The Muslim countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council that include Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and United Arab Emirates steadfastly refuse to accept any Syrian refugees. Amnesty International, USA (AIUSA) tells The Daily Caller News Foundation they have not accepted a single refugee since the armed Syrian conflict erupted years ago.

“The Gulf States have accepted zero refugees registered with the United Nations and administered through the U.N. resettlement program. They have accepted zero,” Geoffrey Mock, the Syrian country coordinator for AIUSA, tells TheDCNF.

Nadim Houry, the Human Rights Watch deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, calls it “shameful.”

The reluctance of Muslim countries to accept Syrians also may make it much harder for Americans to accept President Barack Obama’s proposal to resettle 10,000 refugees throughout the United States.

The Gulf states can be a natural new home for many of the Syrians. The Persian Gulf countries are fabulously wealthy from oil revenues, have strong economies, speak the same Arabic language and offer a familiar culture for the displaced Syrians.

A Fox News poll taken after the Paris attacks reports 67 percent oppose taking in any of the 10,000 Syrian refugees Obama wishes to resettle in the United States. Seventy-seven percent replied that “at least one of those coming through this process will be a terrorist who will succeed in carrying out an attack on U.S. soil.”

A Harris poll taken about a week after the Paris attacks shows that six out of 10 (61 percent) oppose the president’s plan to accept 10,000 refugees. Going deeper, it shows that 63 percent fear any Syrian refugee admitted to the U.S. could be connected to terrorism.
Those fears hardened after the Nov. 13 Islamic State attack in Paris that killed 130. Many of the terrorists that night were either French or Belgian citizens.

A Bloomberg Politics post-attack public opinion poll taken Nov. 15 to 17 shows 53 percent oppose any resettlement of Syrians in the United States, with only 28 supporting the president.

On Nov. 20, the House also voted 289 to 137 to call a pause in the resettlement program until greater security measures are in place to screen the refugees. The vote included 47 Democrats joining Republicans.

Thirty-one governors vow to stop temporarily accepting Syrian refugees into their states. All of the governors are Republican except for one.

Sen. Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican who is seeking the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, raises the issue in his campaign.

The Gulf states are the “ones actually giving a lot of arms and weapons to radical Islamists. They’re taking zero refugees,” Paul declared in a campaign stop in his home state of Kentucky Nov. 23.

Muslim countries bordering Syria such as Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon accepted the bulk of the 4.2 million Syrian refugees. Many there live in makeshift overcrowded tent cities operated by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and its resettlement agency.

Egypt, which accepted 127,000 of the 4.2 million Syrian refugees, also appears to be getting cold feet about accepting more. Egyptian officials are now expelling some refugees, according to Mock. He tells TheDCNF some refugees are on hunger strikes because of depraved conditions.

Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon have also begun to impose new restrictions on accepting more Syrian refugees.

Despite the worldwide clamor in support of the refugees, funding to help them isn’t available. UNHCR earlier this month reported that globally, governments have contributed only half of the $4.5 billion estimate of the cost of needed support for the refugees.

Like some Americans, the monarchs in the Gulf states appear to be suspicious of accepting Muslims who they fear could have a destabilizing effect on their societies.

Sultan Sooud al-Qassemi of Oman wrote last Sept. 3 in the International Business Times, “I suspect that the Gulf States may also be wary of allowing a large number of politically vocal Arabs into their countries that might somehow influence a traditionally politically-passive society.”

Further compounding the problem is that none of the Gulf states signed the 1951 Refugee Convention that defines a refugee as a person “outside the country of his nationality’ because of ‘fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality.”

Failure to sign the post-World War II convention means Gulf states don’t have to recognize the refugees and do not have to cooperate with the U.N. resettlement program.

Many of those Palestinian refugees from 1948 have not been naturalized by their own Arab governments and remain stateless people without a passport or citizenship rights in any Arab country.

Saudi Arabia, through its state-run press agency, stated it does not accept Syrian refugees but will accept Syrian citizens who want to live in “dignity” within its borders. The monarchy asserts it has accepted 2.5 million Syrians in that manner.

But Amnesty International USA says the claim refers to migrant workers who work in the kingdom for low wages. “None of them went through the U.N. resettlement process. They are migrant workers throughout the Gulf states,” Mock says.

“Just to accept those without participating in the U.N. resettlement process is not showing the leadership we think they need to be taking,” he says.

Bowie “The Deserting Traitor” Bergdahl should be executed shortly after his conviction.

http://ti.me/1iLFERZ

Troops suggest that Bergdahl’s desertion makes him more traitor than hero.

Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl was freed by the Taliban over the weekend after they held him for nearly five years, in exchange for five Taliban leaders, who will spend a year cooling their heels in Qatar. You might have heard about it on the news.

Chances are you haven’t heard of the six soldiers who died hunting for him after he went missing, according to military officials. Now that Bergdahl has been sprung—in exchange for five senior Taliban officials, who had been imprisoned at Guantanamo—soldiers who served with Bergdahl are grumbling that he deserted and shouldn’t be hailed as a hero, especially given the resulting cost in American lives.

Chances are you haven’t heard of the six soldiers who died hunting for him after he went missing, according to military officials. Now that Bergdahl has been sprung—in exchange for five senior Taliban officials, who had been imprisoned at Guantanamo—soldiers who served with Bergdahl are grumbling that he deserted and shouldn’t be hailed as a hero, especially given the resulting cost in American lives.

The bile surrounding his rescue is blunt on his Fort Richardson, Alaska brigade’s Facebook page:

“I say we welcome him home with a firing squad.,” one says. “He’s a piece of trash and everyone from [Fort Richardson] knows it the only person less American than that man is the president for giving up 5 hvt’s [High-Value Targets]”

“Now he can stand trial for deserting his post,” says one message on his unit’s Facebook page—a sentiment that has garnered 44 “likes”.

“Do you know how many families never saw their loved ones because of him?” a third poster asked.

Commenters who suggested such comments were unduly harsh were dismissed by and large. “Maybe if you knew the truth and the sacrifices made from people in our units in Alaska to find this douche you wouldn’t feel the way you do,” one responded to a poster urging restraint. “I feel worse for the kids who have to grow up fatherless cause their daddies died looking for this punk.”

Tellingly, President Obama lauded the “courage” of Bergdahl’s parents throughout his imprisonment, but merely extended an unadorned “welcome home” to Bergdahl himself.

Conflicting reports have surrounded Bergdahl’s disappearance. But there is evidence that he was upset over U.S. policy in Afghanistan and deserted his post in a war zone in Paktika province, in the southeastern part of the country by the Pakistan border, while serving with the 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division.

On Sunday, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel didn’t issue Bergdahl a blank check for his pre-capture actions. “Our first priority is assuring his well-being and his health and getting him reunited with his family,” he said. “Other circumstances that may develop and questions, those will be dealt with later.”

Soldiers who fought in Afghanistan are waiting. “Those allegations can—and should—be handled administratively or legally once he’s back,” says a former Army officer who served in Afghanistan. Because he’s now working at a senior level in the U.S. government, he wouldn’t allow his name to be used. “If he did, in fact, desert, then he unnecessarily risked the lives of many brave people.”

Pentagon officials have suggested that Bergdahl will likely not be charged with any violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, believing that five years in Taliban custody was punishment enough.

But those irate over Bergdahl fear that the nation has forgotten the men they say were lost in the hunt for him:

ArmyBowen

Staff Sergeant Clayton Bowen, 29, of San Antonio, Texas, and Private 1st Class Morris Walker, 23, of Chapel Hill, N.C., were killed by a roadside bomb in Paktika province on Aug. 18, 2009, while trying to find Bergdahl. Like Bergdahl, they were part of the 4th BCT from Fort Richardson, Alaska.

Bowen’s mother last heard from her son the night before he died. “Clay called me around midnight to tell me I

wouldn’t hear from him for a few days,” she said. She never heard from him again, although she can still hear his voice in the two CDs he recorded with the 82nd Airborne All-American Chorus. “He was the only bass in the group,” she said, “so you could always hear him.”

“What I think of first when I think of Morris is his smile because he was always smiling,” his junior-high teacher,

ArmyWalker

Wanda Bordone, told the Associated Press after he died. “He had a great sense of humor, lots of friends.”

Staff Sergeant Kurt Curtiss, 27, of Murray, Utah,died Aug. 26 in Paktika Province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when he was shot while his unit was supporting Afghan security forces during an enemy attack. Like Bergdahl, Bowen and Walker, he was part of the 4th BCT.

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“I’ll never forget you Kurt,” Adrian Ramirez a fellow soldier from Fort Richardson, posted on a memorial site. “You were my first team leader from the beginning and my squad leader to the end. I will miss you and all the memories I have shared with you.”

2nd Lieutenant Darryn Andrews, 34, of Dallas, Texas, died Sept. 4 in Paktika Province when enemy forces attacked his vehicle with an improvised explosive device and a rocket-propelled grenade. Like Bergdahl, Bowen, Walker and Curtiss, Andrews was part of the 4th BCT.

ArmyAndrews

“We grew up with an enormous amount of pride for our nation,” Andrews’ mother, Sondra, told the Amarillo Globe-News. That was understandable: his father. grandfather and uncle had served in uniform. “We passed it on to our children, never thinking we would pay the ultimate sacrifice.”

Staff Sergeant Michael Murphrey, 25, of Snyder, Texas, died Sept. 6 in Paktika province after being wounded by an IED. Like Bergdahl, Bowen, Walker, Curtiss and Andrews, Murphrey was part of the 4th BCT.

“On his 17th birthday his family took him skydiving and after that,” his obituary read, “he decided he wanted to be an Army paratrooper.”

The U.S. military rushed him to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Landstuhl, Germany—the same medical facility where Bergdahl is now being treated.

Bergdahl is expected to fly home to the U.S. soon for additional care and counseling.

Martinek never got that chance. He died a week after the attack—on Sept. 11.

Martinek “tried not to talk too much about what he was doing, but he said he liked helping people,” his brother, Travis Wright, told the AP.

ArmyMartinek

Like Bergdahl, Bowen, Walker, Curtiss, Andrews and Murphrey, Martinek was part of the 4th BCT.

The diversion of these men and their units to the hunt for Bergdahl thinned the ranks of U.S. troops elsewhere in the region, contributing to several more American KIAs, U.S. soldiers who were there at the time believe.

Military justice can be swift and merciless, although that appears unlikely in this case. But the past cannot be erased, and it’s that legacy that gives the troops involved a markedly different view of Bergdahl and his rescue than that of most Americans sitting at home, paying scant attention to the nation’s only soldier missing in action in Afghanistan until Saturday.

The reason, for anyone who has been in combat, is pretty simple. Soldiers never forget. Civilians rarely remember.

Senior US officials said on Tuesday that they will enter peace talks with the Taliban at a new office in Doha “within the coming days”, in what may be a significant step towards an end to the long-running war.

Senior US officials said on Tuesday that representatives will begin formal talks with the Taliban “within a few” days at a new office in Doha, Qatar.

The Afghan Taliban opened the office to help restart talks on ending the 12-year-old war, saying it wanted a political solution that would bring about a just government and end foreign occupation.

Senior Barack Obama administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak on the record, described the office opening to AP as a stepping stone to full Taliban renouncement of al Qaeda.

FRANCE 24 BLOG

Talking to the Taliban: Violence against women not on the cards

Karzai also on the cards

The officials said the US and Taliban representatives will hold bilateral meetings, then it is expected that Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s High Peace Council will follow up with its own talks a few days later.

A senior Afghan official told Reuters that talks with the High Peace Council would go ahead.

“The peace talks will certainly take place between the Taliban and the High Peace Council,” said the senior official, referring to the body created by Karzai in 2010 to broker peace with the insurgency.

Taliban representative Mohammed Naeem held a news conference from the group’s new office on Tuesday, telling reporters that the Islamist insurgency wanted good relations with Afghanistan’s neighbouring countries. The conference was broadcast live on Qatar’s al Jazeera television channel.

The Taliban had previously said that they would not countenance peace talks with the Karzai government, which they consider a stooge of the United States and other Western nations.